Note: Single quotations indicate thoughts

Part 30.

As Cassy stood looking out the waiting room window, her thoughts drifted back to the conversation that had taken place moments earlier. Nurse Bradford had just brought Tom's parents back to the waiting room. "Who's next?" she had asked.

She glanced at the Ryans for only an instant as they reentered the waiting area, but the image was permanently etched into Cassy's mind. The mother's face perfectly mirrored the father's. Pain and anger at the torture that their son had been forced to endure were evident in their features, but their eyes were the thing that haunted her. Red-rimmed from tears and exhaustion, they were filled with fear. Cassy's heart quickened as she looked to her captain. "Harry, why don't you and Frannie go next. I can wait a little longer."

She quickly averted Harry's piercing look. The memory of her face as she turned to storm the nurses' station played in his mind as he spoke. "You go next, Cassy. He is your partner. Frannie and I can wait. If you don't want to go in alone. . ."

Cassy was too quick to reply, but he let it go unchallenged. "No, Harry, that's not it at all. You and Frannie go next. You really should get home and rest like the doctor told you. It will only be a few more minutes. Really, I can wait. I want you to go first."

Frannie quietly took in both sides of the conversation before making her decision. "Come on, Harry, dear. Cassy is right. We need to get you home to rest. We won't be long, so let's do this her way." Frannie turned to nod in understanding at Cassy, who returned the gesture in gratitude.

'Liar!' she accused as she came back to the present. 'Harry's need to rest had nothing to do with the real reason you didn't want to go in there. Face it, St. John. You're a selfish coward.' As she looked upward through closed eyes, Cassy let the warm rays of the sun bathe her face and neck. 'You can't face him, not after what Harry admitted he suspects. He was there for you, but you can't even go look at him while he's unconscious. Some partner you are.'

Turning away from the window, she took a seat and began to page through a magazine. The words blurred and the pictures became indistinct blobs of color on the pages. 'You are going in there next. You have to be the strong one, remember?'

********************

Frannie echoed Margaret's gasp as she walked into the room, arm in arm with her husband. Harry had filled her in on Tom's condition, but she hadn't imagined he could look this bad. She held back the tears that were threatening to spill. 'I have to be strong. I can't break down like this in front of Harry, not now.' Her eyes traveled to the figure in the bed, taking in the vivid bruising and swelling that seemed to envelop Tom's face. Her gaze moved down past the bruises on the throat and came to rest on the gauze circles around each wrist. 'How could you do this thing, George Stein? You used to be a cop. How could you do this to such a good, decent man?'

Harry gently squeezed her shoulders with his good arm and steered her to the young man's bedside. He reached out and took Tom's limp hand, the too-warm skin reminding him of the inner struggle against the infection. "You see there, Son. I told you all the bad stuff was over now. You just have to work on getting stronger and you'll be outta here in no time." A tear escaped and trailed slowly down the captain's cheek at the lack of response from his detective. The heart monitor beat out a reassuring rhythm, but the steady hissing and clicking of the respirator was far less comforting. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry, Tom. None of this should have ever happened to you. If only I had. . ."

Frannie whirled her husband around to face her by pulling his empty sleeve as she cut off his words. "You stop that right now, Harry Lipschitz. It's not going to do anyone any good, least of all Tom. He doesn't need your guilt. You tell him you're sorry it happened like the rest of us, but don't you dare put the blame for this on yourself. Is that clear?"

Harry stared at his feet and meekly nodded, unable to meet his wife's eyes. Frannie gently wiped away the stray tear and guided his face up, forcing him to look at her. "Good. Let's talk about this later. Right now, Tom needs our love and support." Frannie took his arm and turned back to the man in the bed.

She reached out to caress Tom's shoulder in comfort. 'You poor thing, you're burning up. They said you had a fever, but I didn't think it would be this bad. You have to fight this, Tom. We all need you here.' Frannie was grateful that her husband couldn't see the shock in her eyes.

She quickly recovered before Harry could notice. "You have to hurry up and get out of here, young man. Just as soon as you can have them, I'm going to bring you a huge batch of those homemade chocolate chip cookies you love so much." Frannie smiled as Harry's hand found its way to her shoulder. She didn't have to look at him to know his guilt was back under control, if only for the moment.

"You see there, Ryan. She's talking about those famous cookies of hers already. You'd better do as the lady says. You should know better by now than to cross my Frannie." His eyes met Frannie's as she turned to acknowledge the teasing with a playful, but gentle nudge to his ribs. "We're gonna go and let Cassy come in to see you now. You get some rest and we'll be back to see you later. You get better fast, you hear. That's an order, Sergeant!" Harry chided.

"You listen to your captain, Tom, and we'll see you later. You behave yourself and work on getting better." As Frannie leaned down and kissed Tom's fevered forehead, Harry instantly paled. His mind flashed back to the incidents he had managed to put out of his mind upon Frannie's arrival. He tried to shake the images of the doctor's lips on Tom's, lingering in a good-bye kiss and placing a tender kiss on the side of the bruised and swollen face. The pictures played over and over as the twisted man's words echoed loudly in his mind. ' I won't ever be far from you, not ever. . .We'll be together forever, Tommy. . .I promise.' Frannie turned to leave just as Harry's knees buckled.

*********************

Cassy followed the nurse down the corridor to Tom's room feeling much like a condemned prisoner. 'You have to do this, St. John. You have to keep it together.' She was determined to get through this visit without breaking down. Both Margaret and Lyam had offered to come with her, but she refused, telling them she wanted a moment or two alone with Tom. 'I'm glad they're going down to wait with Frannie while the doctor examines Harry. She was really scared. I've got to go down there and see how he is after I'm done here.'

Her knees were a little wobbly as she made her way to the bedside, but she managed to keep control of the tears that were threatening to spill at any moment. She surveyed the damage to his face and decided that there was more swelling, but all in all, he looked far better than the last time she had seen him. The picture of him laying on the cot coughing up pink bubbly froth played again in her mind. 'Stop it, Cassandra! He's getting better now.'

She pushed the image out of her mind and reached out to stroke Tom's forehead. Cassy was alarmed at the heat she felt radiating from him. 'He wasn't nearly this warm before. Maybe it was because he was in shock earlier. That has to be it. He can't be getting worse. He just can't.' She couldn't hold back the tears any longer and they streamed down her cheeks and onto the bed.

She finally managed to choke out her words through the tears. "You have to get better here, Partner. I need you; you're my best friend. I can't do this alone." Cassy leaned over to gently kiss the near side of his forehead while she continued to caress the other. Her tears slowed as she continued to speak. "When we were at the park and you finally told me about Tremaine and what he'd done to you, I told you that I needed you to reassure me. I still need that, Tom. You have to come back to me now. Please."

One of her hands trailed down his arm past the white circle of gauze to carefully take his. "When you were in the coma after being shot, I told you that I couldn't live with you and that hasn't changed. I also told you that I couldn't live without you. I still feel that way now, only more so. I need you to get me through all this stuff with Stein, what he did to both of us. So don't take too long, here, okay?" Her other hand continued to stroke the too-warm forehead.

"They aren't saying you're going to finish last in the race like they did after the shooting. You sure proved them wrong that time, didn't you? I knew they weren't giving those new shoes enough consideration." She smiled at the memory of him jogging in the new shoes to his car, weaving and dodging imaginary football opponents. She pushed the next part of that memory--the actual shooting--out of her mind. "You're such a child sometimes, Ryan. I'll never admit that I said this, so don't even bother to remember it, but it's one of the things I love most about you." She gave him a wry smile. "Of course, it's also the thing that irritates me the most."

She sat quietly for several minutes, all the while stroking his fevered brow. Unable to stand the noise of the machines he was hooked up to, she began to speak again. "I also told you when you were in that coma that I loved how you took the teasing. I still do. You have to wake up soon, Thomas. The teasing isn't any fun if you aren't awake to take it." The tears began to fall again. "You hurry up, okay? I really miss you."

****************

"I told you I'm fine. I just got a little dizzy for a minute. It's nothing to make a federal case out of." Harry was not happy to find himself back in the emergency room waiting on yet another nurse with discharge papers after the doctor pronounced him fit to leave.

"Harry, fainting dead away is not something one does when one is fine." Frannie was trying not to lose patience, but the strain of the past few days was wearing on them all. Not having slept all night didn't help matters any.

"The doctor said it was just stress and exhaustion. A little sleep and I'll be good as new." Harry wasn't giving in just yet.

"He also said that had you gone straight home like they told you to last night that this probably wouldn't have happened. And for the record, he told you to get a lot of rest, not a little sleep. This time you will follow the doctor's orders, Harry Lipschitz, so don't even try to argue." The tone of Frannie's voice told Harry that he had clearly lost this round. He breathed a sigh of relief when the door finally opened and the nurse appeared with the discharge papers.

End Part 30